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THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary

For Immediate Release

April 27, 1998

REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT
ON SURGEON GENERAL'S REPORT

The South Lawn

2:00 P.M. EDT

THE PRESIDENT: Thank you very much, Dr. Satcher, for
the exceptional report. I thank all those who worked on it. Mr.
Vice President, Secretary Shalala, thank you for your long and
constant fidelity to this cause. Thank you, Senator Frist, for being
here, for demonstrating that it is a medical, not a political issue,
and an American, not a partisan issue. You gave us a two-fer today,
and we thank you for that. You were great. Thank you. (Applause.)

I also thank Senator Hatch and Senator Chafee for being
here, all the members of the House of Representatives. I thank the
leaders of the Native American tribes who are here. I especially
thank the attorneys general who are here. They had a lot to do with
beginning this long struggle to free our children from tobacco, and
they deserve a lot of the credit for the efforts that are now going
on. And I'd like to thank the young people who are standing behind
me and those whom they represent, all across America, in the Campaign
for Tobacco-Free Youth. They represent the future we are trying to
preserve. (Applause.)

This report gives us fresh evidence that those of us in
this society who are adults, and especially those of us who are
parents, are not doing our jobs very well. Any of us who have ever
been parents know that our most profound and instinctive urge is to
protect our children from danger so that they can grow up healthy,
safe and secure.

Just today I was talking before I came in here with a
member of the House who was at our previous event, and he was talking
about a young staff member of his who was dealing with a serious
health problem. And he choked up, he couldn't even finish the
conversation. And he's a good person with a good heart, but that
reflects the natural human response we have to protect our own
children and all those who are of the younger generation from
whatever dangers we can in the hope that they will have the
opportunity to live full, good lives.

Well, we've done a good job over the years of strapping
our kids into seatbelts and cars and safety seats. We do a pretty
good job of bundling up children against the winter cold; not many of
them die of pneumonia anymore. We make sure that they get to school
safely each day. But we haven't done what we should in wrapping the
protective arm of parents and other adults in our society as a whole
around them when it comes to resisting advertising, peer pressure, or
whatever other forces get young people into smoking, even though it's
illegal to sell cigarettes to children in every state in the United
States.

We know that today about a third of our children are
smoking. The report issued by Dr. Satcher shows that more and more
are becoming hooked on cigarettes. Smoking rates are up among teens
of all backgrounds, but now we see especially among Hispanics, Native

Americans, Asians and Pacific Islanders, and especially -- and most
dramatically -- among African Americans, where the rates used to be
dramatically lower than the average.

These are children just starting out in life -- they've
got enough challenges as it is. We ought to do more to clear the
way, to assure them the best possible chance at the future of their
dreams. Instead, they are still becoming the targets of highly
sophisticated marketing campaigns. They are the "replacement
smokers" of the advertisers' strategy. But they are our children and
we can't replace them.

The call to action should be getting louder. Congress
has a very important opportunity to build on the work done by the
attorneys general, the representatives of individuals who have been
harmed in smoking, and others -- the work of the FDA -- to pass a
comprehensive, bipartisan tobacco bill that will cut teen
smoking by raising the price of cigarettes, putting into
place tough restrictions on advertising and access, imposing strong
penalties on those who continue to sell cigarettes to children,
ensuring the FDA has the authority it needs to regulate tobacco
products, protecting farmers and farming communities, and, yes, doing
what Dr. Satcher says we still need to do -- continuing to invest
more in research to find out the answers that we don't have yet in
this regard.

A bill sponsored by Senator McCain and voted out of the
committee with all but one vote -- a unanimous vote save one -- is a
good step in that direction, because it explicitly changes the rules
of the game to make it much harder for the tobacco industry to profit
at the expense of our children's health.

I want to say a special word of thanks, too, to Senator
Frist, because he's worked so hard to make sure that the bill
provides the FDA with the authority it needs to continue to cover
tobacco products.

Now, folks, the Surgeon General has just issued his
first report. It's a fine report. It's a compelling report. It is
obviously compelling to the leaders of the groups from whom these
children come, because they have come here. We know what the danger
is. We know what the remedy is. They're just kids; we're the
grown-ups. Now, if we know what the danger is and we know what the
remedy is, are we going to do what it takes to save their lives and
their health and their future, or not? It is as simple as that.
This is not rocket science. (Applause.)

I have been profoundly moved by the extent to which this
really has become an issue about health, not politics; an issue about
our children, not partisan differences. Every step along the way we
have been able to reach across party lines, we've been able to put
aside rhetoric, we've been able to try to look to the health issue of
our children.

Now, I know there are some complexities surrounding this
issue. There are complexities: How much money should be raised?
How should it be spent? How should we assure the continuing
jurisdiction of the FDA? Exactly what are the nature of the
advertising restrictions? There are complicated questions. But my
experience now, after many, many years in public life, is that all
the complicated questions get much simpler if you focus on the big
issue.

The big issue is that the children behind us deserve to
have a future, and we know that unless we do something to stop them
from being treated as replacement smokers, their future will be
restricted. That is the big issue. We know what the problem is, we
know what to do about it. I suggest that these children -- you look
at them, look at all those they represent, look at those who don't
yet have the good sense to put their t-shirts on and join their
crusades -- and it becomes pretty clear that we need to take this
very first report by our latest distinguished Surgeon General and do
the right thing with the report and for our children.